


Through the Grotto

by mitochondriencocktail



Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: Absent Parents, Alternate Universe - High School, Consensual Underage Sex, Fluff and Angst, High School, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Jealousy, M/M, Masturbation, Richard being Richard with his emotions, Teen Angst, brief slurs from aly and jason, that's a tag you all know the meaning of, there's a lot of build up pining so HAVE FUN
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-23
Updated: 2017-09-17
Packaged: 2018-12-19 02:53:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11888436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mitochondriencocktail/pseuds/mitochondriencocktail
Summary: There have always been a lot of intangible truths in Richard Hendricks' life, things he's wholly accepted as fact. He's had no reason to question them until now-- until Jared Dunn steps into his life. A little abruptly (in the bathroom), a little strangely (in the middle of being given a swirlie), but welcomed nonetheless.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'll spare you all my screaming and just cut to the chase:
> 
> This was a silly little idea that snowballed, and, gosh, wow. Okay. It grew a lot bigger than I ever imagined it to, but I'm pretty darn proud. This wouldn't have been finished at all though without the very wonderful and lovely [joycecarolnotes](http://archiveofourown.org/users/joycecarolnotes/pseuds/joycecarolnotes)
> 
> She let me scream a lot so y'all wouldn't have to hear it, and she provided me with deft feedback and heartwarming encouragement. So please also thank her for this existing.
> 
> That being said, just heed the tags, buckle in, and I hope you enjoy! Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated! <3
> 
> CHAPPIE 1/2 COMING ATCHU

There’s a lot to be said about courage in the face of fear; the admirability of such a feat, the glorious glow of the aftermath, the neat little stories that come about as a result. But Richard isn’t any of that. He doesn’t think he could muster courage if it was offered to him on a platter. Some days, he barely finds the energy to crawl out of bed, and if it weren’t for the inertia of routine, he feels he would’ve sunken into himself ages ago. 

Nobody’s stopping him. No friends, only a distant father. Maybe one of the teachers would give a shit, but would they really? He doesn’t know. It’s not that he wants to, like, do anything extreme. No. He just— he wants a break. A clean break from all of this. Something new.

But then, often in the bleak in betweens of school and homework and eating and sleeping and video games and jacking off, he wonders with terror if he’d even know when something like that was being offered to him.

His head is slammed against the toilet bowl, porcelain ringing out in the crowded bathroom. A smothered cry for help among a slew of cruel words. Tears burn and blur at the edges of Richard Hendricks’ eyes and he faintly tastes blood somewhere in his mouth. The fact he can’t tell where it comes from only frightens him more. His arms are restrained by Jason, and Aly shoves his head closer and closer to the bowl, and Richard screams— hoarse, desperate. Furious. It falls uselessly flat in the third floor bathroom. 

He knows he deserves it. He didn’t have to hack Jason’s laptop during the class break, but he wanted to. So badly. Have it play that stupid Badger Song on repeat until Mr. Belson had taken a hammer to it to get it to stop. 

Richard’s smug laugh had given him away.

At night he fantasizes about doing much more. Cracking their skulls against the same toilet they’ve plunged him into hundreds of times, breaking their teeth with the clean swing of an old  _ Windows 98 _ keyboard. Those had always had some weight to them. Could probably do some substantial damage. Maybe break a nose if he kept hitting. Draw some blood.

“No no no no no!” he yells instead, pushing back against the hands fisted in his hair. “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry!” His words blur together into incoherency.

“Get the fuck… in there, Richie,” Aly says through gritted teeth. His muscles strain and he puts a foot on Richard’s back, shoving him downward, curled into the toilet with the tip of his nose skimming the top. It smells terrible.

He hears himself begging. He hates it. He hates himself for doing it.

“Fucking faggot,” Jason swears. He doubles down on Richard and tightens his grip on his arms, and Richard folds, crying out in pain. His head plunges into the sickly looking water and the handle above him is wrenched down, and Richard screams. Water fills his mouth and he sputters for a breath of air.

He can’t see. It’s all so dark, crammed in here as water rushes around him and swirls down the bowl. “You owe me a new laptop,” he hears, but in broken snippets. Fragmentary snatches of voices yelling at him, plunging him deeper into the bowl. Richard thinks he might just die.

And then it stops. Like the clearing of a storm, the clouds sweep off to the side and Richard sucks in lungfuls of air, fingers gripping the sides of the bowl. Rivulets of water dribble down from the tips of his soaked hair and sounds come rushing back to him in pieces. There’s the clatter of the stall door, footsteps clambering up and away.

“We weren’t doing anything,” Jason says.

“Don’t fucking touch us, freak,” Aly says.

Richard swings his head around to look at his savior, and shoves a handful of wet hair out of his face, revealing a very tall boy standing by the sinks. He only grabs a glimpse before the bathroom stall swings shut from leftover momentum; ratty yellow t-shirt hanging on an almost skeletal frame, sunken eyes sitting just beneath floppy dark hair. Richard would’ve almost believed he’d seen a ghost if the door wasn’t swinging back open, the boy kneeling, extending a fistful of those crunchy brown paper towels.

“Are you alright?” He stares at Richard with an unwavering intensity locked behind those blue eyes. Richard finds himself glancing away, unable to hold it. Not right now. Too much has just happened and he can feel the creeping tendrils of overstimulation at the edges of his brain.

He shakes his head. “Not great,” he says. Snatches the paper towels and scrambles to stand. It stings when he presses them to his face, and they peel away with a splotch of blood. And then it occurs to him to ask, “What’d you do to them?”

The boy shrugs, stands, and he towers over Richard in the tiny stall. His face is almost in his chest until they shuffle out and into the fluorescents. “Nothing. They just saw me and ran.”

Richard frowns. “That’s all? Really?” How could this beanpole of a boy have struck terror in Jason and Aly? He looks like if too strong a breeze passed by, he might snap in half. A walking PSA for late-stage tuberculosis. But, the longer Richard stares, the more he can see something. A shadowy lingering, a sense of metaphorical embalming just underneath his skin. It unsettles Richard. But also intrigues him. “I— whatever, you know what? Never mind. Thanks, uh…” He gestures with his hand.

“Jared. Or— well, technically I’m Donald, but Mr. Belson called my name wrong during attendance the first week, so everybody’s been calling me Jared to my face since then.”

“To your face?”

The boy— Jared who is actually Donald— shrugs again, thin shoulders sloping along with a thinner smile on his face. “I’ve heard them say other things, but it’s alright. Doesn’t really bother me.” He toys with a wooden block covered in faded Crayola marker scrawlings that at one time had probably read, “Bathroom Pass.”

“Oh, uh, that’s— that’s good. I’m Richard.”

“I know,” Jared says. He looks elated almost. Richard feels a subtle heat crawl into his cheeks at the undivided attention, but the question still remains— 

“How...”

“Oh! I help Mr. Belson grade the quizzes and tests after school. You always do exceptionally well.”

Richard makes a face and blurts, “You help him? Willingly?” But then he processes the rest of the words and tacks on, “You think I’m smart?”

“Incredibly,” Jared says.

Richard likes Jared.

— 

They start sitting together at lunch. It’s unspoken, undiscussed, and if pressed, Richard wouldn’t even be able to tell you who started it. But what matters is that it happens, pulled from thin air like a magician’s sleight of hand coin trick, pretty nickels and quarters accumulating in Richard’s pocket every day Jared and him sit together. 

They don’t even talk sometimes, just sit there, eating their respective lunches. Or, well, Richard eats his until he realizes one week that Jared’s forgotten his every few days, and doesn’t have the lunch money to cover. So if Richard decides that he suddenly doesn’t want his grapes, or maybe his shitty microwave chicken nuggets he packed for himself, then, well, he figures it’s better to give them to Jared than let them go to waste. It’s not a big deal.

Jared becomes a solid presence in Richard’s life through the rest of September and most of October; chatting in between classes, chatting after school, chatting in between the occasional overlapping free period during the day, stowed away in the far corners of the library.

“You mean you’ve never gone on vacation?” Richard asks one day. “Like, not even as a little kid?” His own memories of sandy beaches and campgrounds are relegated to his younger years, back when his mom was still around, before the glossy polished images of his dad slowly began to fade with the wear and tear of reality— torn corners and scratches revealing dusty emotional distance and perpetual disappointment. It's whatever, he tells himself. 

Jared shakes his head. “Not that I can recall,” he says. 

“Do you think your foster family would ever take you somewhere?”

Jared gives a strained laugh, shakes his head. “I… There is one memory of my mother and I at a park. She was pushing me on the swing, we ate convenient store sandwiches on a bench.” He smiles fondly to himself. The sudden vulnerability makes Richard uncomfortable, so he switches tactics. 

“Where would you go? If you could visit anywhere?”

Jared sits back in his chair and looks down at his English folder with serious contemplation. His hair flops to the right side as he tilts his head, the shoulders of his soft green t-shirt bunching up with the movement. “Oh, gosh, anywhere, really. I’d just be happy to go anywhere. Maybe somewhere warm.”

“Yeah, but, one place. If you had to choose one place, where would you go?”

Jared looks up at him. “Where would you go, Richard?”

Richard freezes, a handful of answers tumble through his mind, but with a twitch of his lips, he finds himself saying, “Somewhere warm would be nice, wouldn’t it?”

— 

It’s quiet around the house, it always is, and Richard wonders to some extent if this is basically what living alone is like. Just, well, sort of. He doesn’t pay bills yet. Doesn’t even have a job. His dad makes enough to keep them superficially happy, enough for Richard to tuck away into a bank account he’s not supposed to touch yet. But he supposes that this is what adult solitude is. He’s not sure if he likes it or not though, which is why he decides to jack off because, fuck it, he’s seventeen and there’s nothing else to do.

He’s on his back on the couch this time, legs spread, a hand loose around his neck, squeezing gently, experimentally. He learned that from some porn he was watching, and it’d stuck ever since. The comingling of pleasure and just the slightest tease of pain elevated it, made his dick hard quicker than anything else he’s tried yet, and, fuck, he should be doing his calc homework. He tries to think about Kassie with the auburn hair, the— the fucking stupid pink bra straps that peek out of her tank top. Her too tight shorts that show off her long legs and— sometimes if he’s lucky— a sliver of her panties. 

Richard’s hand stutters. He thinks about his calc homework again. And then his mind ambles towards Aly and Jason in the bathroom. They were always so much bigger than him. Stronger. He frowns. Thinks about Jared appearing. How does Jared jack off? Does he even jack off? He seems so— so weird. Impenetrable. What about Jared in panties— 

“No,” Richard physically says out loud. It startles him, the sound of his own voice.

He sighs with disatisfaction at the distraction, opens his eyes to flush his intrusive thoughts, and then tries to chase the sheer guttural feeling of arousal building in his stomach. Intrusive thoughts are normal, he tells himself. He read that somewhere. No correlation. 

He licks his palm again. More thoroughly. He re-tightens the hand around his throat and empties his mind and just focuses on the wet glide of his dick in his fist, the tightening of his balls as he inches closer and closer to orgasm.

His mind spasms, goes blank. 

He comes with a shudder and a choked sigh. 

— 

People are afraid of Jared, Richard realizes. Rather belatedly. About three days before Halloween, which happens to fall on a much protested Tuesday this year. Richard doesn’t care much, never really did about Halloween. After he understood that, “Oh, sorry, your invitation must’ve gotten lost,” was actually code for, “We didn’t invite you because nobody likes you,” Richard had all but shelved most holidays— right next to birthday parties, sleepovers, and even just dicking around at the local supermarket because his town had  _ nothing _ worthwhile in it for the hormonal angst-ridden demographic of middle and high schoolers.

But, really, people are afraid of Jared. With his uncouth reflexes and wiry demeanor, he quiets hallways and turns aggrieved eyes away from Richard for the first time in his life. It’s like he can finally breathe without the threat of someone jumping on him. 

But Jared doesn’t walk so much as he fumbles when he’s around Richard— not with clumsiness, but eagerness; fumbling into step next to Richard, fumbling to pace ahead to open the door for him, fumbling to share grainy flip-phone photos of blurred birds he saw on his way to school. There’s a handful of photos Richard notices that Jared clicks past hurriedly, using his height as an advantage to casually cradle his phone against his chest. Richard wants to ask, but he’s not sure if Jared would like that. And he wants Jared to like him. 

But, the point is, they’re friends. Or at least Richard thinks they are. He’s never been great at this. At keeping people in his life unless they were assigned through consanguinity. At taking an interest in them for longer than a few days because he knows how people operate, he tells himself; social cliques and hierarchies and  _ nobody ever wants to hear what he has to say. _ But Jared does. God, how Jared does. 

So, for that, Richard tries to return the favor. Albeit a touch awkwardly, with the hint of a crack in his voice, fingers tugging at his earlobe and sliding down so he can bite at his thumb. He misses the way Jared watches him do this, collecting the nervous tics like marbles in a pouch for safekeeping later, as something to take out and revere individually under the grace of the setting sun. Jared happily chirps back answers, fragmented responses teeming with frankly horrifying details sometimes. His parents’ deaths. His uncle’s lunacy. His group home’s astringent policies that led some boys to run away— only to face severe punishment for ever conceiving such individualistic thoughts. But Jared relays it all with an unerringly even keeled look in his eye. 

It should scare Richard. 

But it doesn’t.

He doesn’t talk about his foster family, though. Any questions about them are met with a hollow laugh, an exclamation of, “Nothing all that interesting.” A hand wave. Refocusing the lasers of attention back on Richard.

Sometimes Richard will catch the crick of a neck or the crack of a back, always followed by a small noise of discomfort from Jared. He says it’s growing pains. Richard isn’t sure how much more he can keep growing.

“Are you going out for Halloween?” Jared asks him on Tuesday. They’re standing at Richard’s locker, students pointedly passing them by, determined to reach the doors after a long day. The more devoted of the students wear makeshift Halloween costumes fitting under the guidelines of the dress code, but everybody else whispers about parties and liquor that Richard will never taste.

“Like, out? Or out-out?” Richard crams books into his backpack. Calc II, Dickinson, Bio.

“Trick-or-treating.”

Richard can’t help it. He laughs, sharp and malicious, and it sinks its daggers right into Jared. His mouth slides into a frown, a look of worry creasing his features. Richard doesn’t know what to do, so, of course, he fucks things up further. “Trick-or-treating is for little kids.”

Jared stares at him, mouth twisting into a frown. “I never went as a kid.”

“Fuck— I… look.” He feels like shit. Of course Jared wouldn’t have ever gone trick-or-treating. He decides in that moment he doesn’t like seeing that look on Jared’s face, which, okay, is kind of a weird thought, but they’re friends, and friends aren’t supposed to make each other upset. Apparently. Friends are supposed to hang out. Do things. Which, Richard realizes they haven’t really technically hung out outside of school, which is kind of weird. Kind of shitty of him. He rubs at the back of his head. “Do you… uh.” A pause. “Do you wanna see where I go and burn things? And then, like, I don’t know. Come over for dinner or something?”

“Yes,” Jared says. “Yes,” he says again, like it’s just in case Richard didn’t hear him. Wide blue eyes watch him like prey who’s just been given a second chance to escape. To find freedom.

Richard shuts his locker and hikes up his bag. 

“Alright, uh, follow me.”

It’s in the opposite direction of his house, which he’d done not without purpose. A small backwoods boon flush with birches and maples, a well worn narrow footpath caked with damp refuse. It’s not Richard’s favorite place to be, on account of the pervasive swarms of mosquitos still lingering around even in late October, but it’s a place. Where he can burn things.

Nothing ever too big, nothing too damaging, but old newspapers, research papers he hated writing, fistfuls of dried grass. He doesn’t really care what it is, so long as it burns unobtrusively and gives him what he really wants— the flames.

He loves to watch the flames whipping around like sheets on a clothes line caught up in a rowdy gust of wind. They envelop anything he tosses into the fire, crinkling edges with with tickling embers until they simply dissipate into smoke and ash that smudges his hands. Usually he wipes them on his jeans, on his shirt. Today though, Jared hands him a pristine white handkerchief with, “It’s clean, I promise.”

Richard asks, “Are you sure? It’ll probably stain.”

Jared nods, so he acquiesces, taking the white handkerchief to wipe the soot and dirt off. He drags it across his palms and then squeezes the fabric around each of his fingers, painting pieces of the handkerchief a downy grey. 

“Thanks,” Richard says, hands it back. 

Jared folds it carefully, eyes trained on it, and slips it back into his pocket. “My pleasure, Richard.”

“Do you wanna throw anything in here?” The smoke tickles his nose and he sniffles.

“Like what?” Jared stands with his head cocked, nearly shoulder to shoulder with Richard even though the ramshackled makeshift fire pit could accommodate at least 4 people around it.

Richard shrugs. “Anything you want, really. Birthday cards, photos, newspapers, even just some twigs.”

Jared considers Richard’s words, and part of Richard wonders if Jared even has some of those things. He feels a bit stupid. Again. “When _ is _ your birthday?”

Of all the responses Richard could’ve expected, it certainly isn’t the one Jared gives him. And he sort of likes that. Jared, inexplicably, blessedly, laughs. It isn’t hollow, it isn’t polite. It’s genuine amusement, like when he’d laughed unexpectedly at Richard’s terrible offhand falafel pun, delivered in a meandering dead monotone. (“I'm too fala-full to eat fal-awful falafel.”) The triviality of it caught Richard endearingly off guard. “I don’t know.”

“What?”

“CPS lost my birth certificate.”

“What?” Richard says again, because, seriously, what?

“Oh, it’s alright,” he says, swatting a hand, staring at the fire. “I think it’s some time in early March. Maybe late February.”

Richard blinks. “Oh.” A pause. “Birthday’s are kinda overrated.”

Jared hums, not quite agreeing, not quite disagreeing.

“But, uh,” Richard continues, kicking at some stones by his feet. Loose bits of shale from some larger rocks nearby. They split into fragile slabs. “I guess since you don’t know the exact day, that just means you have to celebrate the whole week or something, right?” He lets out a thin laugh and turns his head up at the feeling of eyes on him. Jared watches him, finally, with a wide and deep blue concentration. And then, miraculously, a smile.

Jared looks warmer by the fire, less sickly, less tense. The light plays across his features like notes from a piano expanding out into an empty room; filling it, imbuing the walls and floors and ceilings with a subtle crescendo that— that— their shoulders bump in that naturally accidental way as Jared says, “One can dream.” They settle into silence, watching the fire, listening to its cleansing crackle.

Richard’s only ever come here alone before. It’s his place where he can disappear, burn away his public image and step comfortably out of the daily skin he inhabits at school. The one he loathes that he wears; meek, pedantic, afraid. But now Jared’s here. And, well, Richard never thought he’d be sharing with this with someone else. Never thought someone would willingly come. He listens to the crunch of leaves underneath Jared’s feet as he shifts, both of them staring into the heat of the flames.

They bump shoulders again, perhaps not as accidental this time. 

Richard isn’t sure. He doesn’t care.

By the time they reach Richard’s house, dusk has begun to encroach upon the neighborhood, and tiny children in bumblebee and princess and dinosaur costumes litter the streets, orange plastic pumpkins in pudgy hands. Some even have caked-on chocolate creasing the corners of their mouths already, and Richard catches Jared staring curiously at them, a soft half-smile on his lips.

“We’ll probably end up having to hand out candy to those kids later, if that’s okay. My dad’s out of town for work again.”

Jared turns to look at him, the glow of the fire still lingering on his features, smoothing out the dark shadows, the gauntness that typically loiters there. He looks healthy. Alive. “I’d be happy to,” he says. Richard thinks that some of the residual glow must rub off on him because when Jared smiles, he feels a little warmer inside.

“You drive?” Jared asks as they pass a beat up 1999 Honda Accord in the driveway, silver paint chipped and one of the lights functional but cracked. Richard frowns, flush with embarrassment. He meant to learn. He really did. But driving was just… terrible. His dad promised him months ago he’d teach Richard, over and over the same words, but they both knew it wasn’t going to happen. It just took Richard a little longer to realize that. He still has the keys shoved into his desk drawer up in his room.

“No,” Richard says. “Do you?”

“Yeah, I can, but,” a shrug, “no car.”

“Well, if you ever need one,” Richard says, nodding towards the car, “you know where to find one.”

Silence greets them like a distant aunt as soon as they step into his house; a small two-story painted a faded green on the outside, creaky stairs immediately to the left, and a hallway lined with generic landscape paintings leading towards the sparse kitchen with an old wooden table and two chairs crammed inside. The table had belonged to Richard’s grandparents ages ago, and clumsy childhood carvings of his name still litter one of the corners.

“You can drop your stuff anywhere, really,” Richard says, motioning to the tiny living room tacked onto the kitchen. Richard flips on every light on the first floor, a habit ingrained from youth, and something he knows his dad would hate, but the result is an illusory coziness, shadows shoved to the corners and the space made liveable. 

“Is it just you and your father?” Jared asks, sliding his backpack carefully off and propping it against the side of the couch. He moves cautiously in Richard’s house, like one wrong step might have him kicked out. Richard just wants him to relax.

“Technically yeah,” Richard shrugs. He doesn't like talking about this. He never has. “Mostly it's just me around here,” he says in a quiet voice, hopelessly dismissive, and he turns towards the fridge and opens it. There's very little in there; some leftover Chinese food, a half empty bottle of ketchup, and some expired orange juice. He's suddenly very embarrassed. “I've never had someone over, really,” he says out loud, though more to himself than Jared. 

He hears Jared creep up from behind and peer into the fridge with him. They stand there, basking in the artificial yellow glow. “It's really alright, Richard,” Jared says, not pitying, but on the edge of understanding. “I'm just happy to spend time with you.” The shadow of a hand brushes across his shoulder, but then seemingly thinks better of it. Richard shuts the fridge, doesn't turn around. He's suddenly aware of how close Jared is to him. 

“You know what? Let’s just order a pizza from Andriano’s.”

“That sounds delicious,” Jared chirps. “I can't remember the last time I've had pizza.”

Jared takes a step back, the tension breaking, the air breathable again, and Richard heads for the phone hanging on the wall. “What do you like on yours?”

His fingers hover over the numbers, dial tone in his ear. 

“I've always wanted to try pineapple on pizza,” he says. Richard frowns, laughs. He whips around, the cord wrapping around his torso as he leans back against the wall, phone still to his ear. 

“Pineapple? That's fucking gross,” he laughs. Jared starts to say something, probably an apology, but Richard barrels ahead. “I'll order you your own whole pizza, how about that?”

Jared goes wide-eyed like Richard’s just insulted his dead mother. 

“You really don't have to, Richard.”

“It's fine. I like taking my dad’s extra cash,” he snickers.

“Does he ever notice?”

Richard turns back around, unwinding himself from the cord. “If he has, he hasn't told me about it, which, well. Whatever.” He finds it curious that Jared doesn't condemn his petty theft. At school he seems like a shining exemplar of a good student; though the students may avoid him, nearly every teacher has something positive to say about Jared, even stopping him in the hallways to say hello on more than one occasion. All Richard usually gets is a cursory glance and a nod. “Pineapple and anything else?”

It takes Jared a moment, the answer clearly on the tip of his tongue, but hesitant to be released. A nervousness attached to appearing imposing. Richard tries to smile encouragingly. He wants to hear what Jared has to say, he realizes. He wants the tenseness in his shoulders to dissipate, the hesitance to stand too closely to anything in Richard’s house to melt into easy comfortability— something even Richard himself struggles with. 

“I'm allergic to gluten,” Jared finally says. 

Richard blinks, stores this nugget of information away. The doorbell rings. “Shit,” Richard swears. “Can you grab the bags of candy on the stairs and hand some out? I'll order the pizza.”

Jared nods, a smile twitching on his thin lips, and then he salutes— of all fucking things. “Aye aye, my captain. All hands on deck for the Halloween Express.”

Richard can’t believe he’s just said that— that horribly, embarrassingly, emphatically uncool thing. He stares at the empty space where Jared had just been standing, a twinge of fondness pushing its stubborn weed-like way up through the concrete cracks. He listens from a distance for the chorus of, “Trick or treat!” and the pleasant hum of Jared’s heartfelt commendations; children giggling, the clatter of candy into plastic buckets.

He fumbles to dial the pizza delivery number when he hears footsteps headed back his way.

They work their way through half a gluten free pineapple pizza and half a pepperoni mushroom pizza, bloated on the greasy crust and melted cheese and bits of Halloween candy in between handing it out to neighborhood kids. It's endearing, but after the sixth time he does it, Richard has to reel in Jared from handing out an entire handful of candy to each kid— especially considering Jared’s hands are the size of one of their heads. At least their house will be memorable among the trick or treaters. 

Richard notices that Jared has a penchant for the little plastic packets of candy corn. He nibbles fastidiously on each piece rather than shove them into his mouth by the handful, which is something Richard tends to do with the bags of Maltesers. 

A restored version of _ The Uninvited _ plays on the tiny tv screen in Richard’s living room and the Halloween crowd has thinned out by 9 o’clock, leaving them to relax with full stomachs and a lot of movie commentary— mostly from Richard because, really, who believes such a reasonably low priced house could come without  _ some _ kind of issue? If it wasn’t a dilapidated roof, then surely it must be ghosts. Jared indulges him with hums and nods, the occasional surprised laugh. 

They sit shoulder to shoulder, reminiscent of when they stood around the fire. Richard knows they don’t have to sit like this, but he also knows he doesn’t have to say anything about it when Jared sits down next to him after washing his hands and throwing napkins away, legs bumping. A whole stretch of couch left untouched. Richard has the jarring image of shoving Jared down onto it and— and something. He focuses on the movie and ignores the flip of his stomach. 

He must’ve eaten too much pizza.

It’s a little after 10PM when Richard wipes drool from his mouth, jolted awake by the sound of a loud commercial on the TV. His whole body has melted into the side of Jared who stares at him with wide eyes, arm sandwiched awkwardly between them, his bottom lip caught between his teeth. Their faces are close. Very close.

In the dark of the living room, he can see flecks of pale green speckled intermittently amid the swaths of cool blue. The rings of his irises. The dark bruise-like circles underscoring Jared’s eyes. 

Richard panics. He turns away, faces the TV, scoops himself out of the sunken in couch with a bone-cracking stretch. His posture’s never been great, and he often pays for it. When he turns around, Jared is still watching him, but his features are lighter. More open. He’s smiling, and softly says, “You fell asleep.”

“I noticed, thanks,” Richard huffs back, amused but still drowsy.

“I wasn’t sure if I should wake you or not.”

Richard shrugs. He knows it’s not an answer, but he thinks that’s okay. Some questions don’t need answers, don’t need to be thought about too hard. He doesn’t really even have an answer. “Do you… uh, wanna stay longer?”

“No, it’s alright. I’m pretty tired, and I have to help Mr. Belson grade after school tomorrow.”

“Right, yeah,” Richard nods. “Your foster parents probably also wonder where you are,” he chuckles. Jared doesn’t quite answer, just nods, so Richard barrels forward. “This was fun though. We should, uh. Do it again.”

“Oh, Richard, I’d love to,” Jared says. “This was the best Halloween I’ve been able to celebrate.”

“I’m… I’m glad.”

They indulge in the silence that follows, Richard standing, Jared sitting. Both smiling. 

When Jared leaves, pockets stuffed with leftover candy corn (Richard insisted he personally hates the stuff), he hugs Richard in the doorway. Tightly. Wordlessly. It catches Richard off guard, he doesn’t react in time to stop Jared— when, normally, he goes out of his way to avoid hugging. Most forms of touching really, but Jared seems to need it, and Richard might kind of need it too. 

He can’t remember the last time he actually really hugged another person, so he lets Jared break that streak; face squished into his neck, bony arms wrapped around his shoulders. Richard twitches to hug back, but, before he can, the moment’s over and Jared is pulling away. Walking out the door with a wave. 

Leaving Richard alone.

— 

Richard lays in bed that night. The hoodie he was wearing is tucked around the head of his bedframe. He can smell Jared on it.

It’s cold, he tells himself. The heater never works right in his room, so it makes sense that he’d want to pile as many layers on as possible. With a blindly groping hand, he reaches for it and tucks it around himself, inhaling deeply.

A rush of something idyllic crawls over him, comforting with its invisible weight. At night, secluded in his room, the logic of shame or— or something less terrible, but just as terrifying, dissipates and leaves him only with instinct. He burrows his face into the hoodie, granules of afterthoughts sliding off like sand on silk, and suddenly there's a hand reaching underneath his covers, tentative but desperate. 

Fingers trail down his stomach and cup his balls, playing absentmindedly with them before sleepwalking up his hardening dick. The sensation pulls a breath out of him and he wraps fingers around himself, not quite stroking yet, not quite giving into the impulse. Then he turns his face into his hoodie and inhales. It reminds him of Jared. 

Jared who listens to him so eagerly, who stares at Richard like he holds up the sun. Who makes him feel appreciated. Wanted. Richard wants to be wanted, has always chased after tendrils of acknowledgement from anyone pitying enough to give it to him; his father, his teachers, even Aly and Jason in some fucked up way. 

But Jared doesn't pity him. He never would do that. Jared likes Richard just as he is; weird and twitchy, too pedantic for his own good. He knows he is. Can't stop the words from tumbling out most of the time. But he's well meaning. He really means well. 

“Fuck,” he swears.

His dick is sliding through his fist and his hips buck up, high-pitched breathy little “ohs” plied from his mouth in neat succession. 

It's quick. His eyes are shut. 

He comes in his hand with a lazy, hazy Cheshire grin. His face turns back towards the hoodie. The darkness swallows his silence and drains the heat of any further thoughts. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiya! This is 3 chapters now because I'm gay and bad at math. Heed warnings, there's more explicit porn this chapter, more allusions to child abuse. I tried my best to juggle that topic as delicately as possible, so please excuse any missteps.
> 
> also I s2g if that punk ass anon comments again, I will make your life a living hell. I know who you are and I'm not in the mood to deal with your whiny bullshit. go focus on yourself and being happy or smth

It's a week into November and the air has taken on an eerie unnatural warmth to it, one of those sluggish heats that echo the days of August, but sits unnervingly close to the end of autumn. Confused students are mismatched in t-shirts and jackets, nobody quite sure what to wear. Even Jared comes ill-dressed, a truly rare sight that surprises Richard, in a thick long sleeved pullover; some faded grey piece with ‘Harvard’ splashed across the front. He looks sweaty. Uncomfortable. Like maybe he didn't sleep last night.

For once, Richard’s penchant for ignoring the weather altogether has brought him good fortune in the form of a light t-shirt and jeans. He muses over his luck on the walk back home after school, watching Jared tug at his wool collar with long fingers, a tired look in his eye.

“Today was long, huh?” Richard makes a point to ask, to lilt his voice, because he knows Jared likes to be asked. About himself, about anything. Not a mark of ego, but a joy at being considered. Richard knows that feeling well.

Jared offers a downcast, “Hm,” of acknowledgement, and Richard decides he doesn't like that. He wants Jared to look at him, but words fail Richard in this pocket of vulnerability. Jared always has something to say. He hikes up his backpack and they continue the walk in silence.

“Do— do you want a t-shirt or something?” Richard asks once they're inside. He can see the individual beads of sweat at Jared’s temples, a slight dampness that curls the very ends of his hair and reminds Richard of summer— just months ago before he ever knew Jared. He wonders what Jared in summer is like. If he's still just as cold to the touch, if he curls up under shady trees with those tattered poetry books he's always lugging around. A cool thermos of tea by his side. Snapping photos of birds on that outdated flip phone of his.

“Oh, no, no. It's alright Richard, but thank you.” He looks up from his textbook at the kitchen table, one elbow propping up his tired face. He smiles, but it's lacking. Hollowed out like a clay basin.

“You seriously look like you're dying there, man,” Richard says. He feels the need to push for some reason. To pull Jared out of whatever fog he's fallen into. “Look— lemme… lemme just go grab something for you, okay? It's like balls hot, and our A/C is doing fuck all, so,” a shrug, a trailing off, an unfinished thought. He stands before Jared can protest and clambers upstairs, yanks out a shirt, and then tumbles back down the stairs with an outstretched fist, panting for breath.

“Here,” he says. He wants Jared to take it. God, how he wants Jared to take it, he realizes. He can't stand seeing him like this, and as if offering a nearly threadbare Star Trek t-shirt would fix all of— all of this _something_ that Richard can’t seem to quite understand. Doesn’t even know where to begin.

Jared looks at him with sad eyes.

“Richard…” he says, plucking his name like a sour string on a guitar. It resonates throughout the room. “It’s really…” he shakes his head, clearing thoughts. He stands suddenly and steps to the side of the table, closer to Richard, encroaching upon his space. Richard doesn’t move. “You’re so kind,” Jared says, and it suckerpunches Richard.

Prickly anxieties puncture Richard’s thoughts, leaving him slowly deflating. Wondering if he’s offended Jared somehow. Then Jared reaches towards his left sleeve, deft fingers curling around the cuff and tugging. Slowly. Hesitating for a moment to look Richard in the eyes. And then he slides the sleeve up to his elbow.

Richard sucks in a breath.

“Oh,” he whispers. “Did… was this Aly and Jason? Did they—”

Jared shakes his head from side to side. Things click into place with a sickening lurch of Richard’s stomach. The tired eyes, the hesitance to speak about his foster family. It makes sense now.

Splotchy purples and yellows encircle Jared’s wrist, nebulous blossoms up along his thin forearm that shake Richard to his core. He reaches out without thought, and Jared flinches.

“Fuck— fuck, sorry, no. I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s okay,” Jared says. Which, no, it’s not okay. None of this is okay and Richard doesn’t know what the fuck to do. Jared offers his arm back to Richard, and he brushes gentle fingertips across it, transfixed by the goosebumps his touch elicits. He swipes his fingers up and down a few times, thinking that maybe he can erase them like this. The bruises. Wipe them clean off with his own hands.

Jared remains still the entire time. Their breathing echos too loudly in the kitchen.

“I’m…” Sorry? Angry? Upset? Richard doesn’t know which to pick. All of them. None of them. He doesn’t know what Jared wants to hear, what he needs to hear, so he says nothing. He offers the t-shirt again to Jared. “You must be too warm in that thing,” he says.

Jared smiles, blessedly, and takes the shirt. “Maybe a little.” He strips off the sweatshirt and Richard forces himself to watch, to catalogue the bruises along his ribcage and chest, the ugly one that swells along his left hipbone. His fingers twitch to touch it. Jared’s head slides through the t-shirt and it’s a bit short on him. Hangs just above his waist. But it fits him, and Richard chokes on a sudden surge of pride. Overwhelming, burning.

“Thank you, Richard.”

“You’re— don’t worry about it. You can keep it.” A pause. “Want some leftover Chinese food?” he suddenly says, turning away. Closing his eyes.

“I’d love some,” Jared says earnestly, always so earnest.

An anger boils within Richard; subtle, but persistent. He insists over cold rice and tofu stir fry that Jared stay the night, but he declines, and Richard doesn’t know what to do. He has no idea. So he shrugs, nods. Claims he doesn’t want his tofu and gives it all to Jared.

In the doorway, he tells him to call if he needs anything.

Jared just smiles; tired, resigned. But, hey, he’s smiling and filled with tofu.

—  

Jared tries to return the shirt a few times, but Richard insists he keep it. He knows Jared doesn’t mean anything by it, but it feels like a rejection of— of his generosity, maybe? Of something. Richard doesn't like feeling rejected, but a part of him knows Jared doesn't mean it like that.

And besides, watching him move around Richard’s house wearing his t-shirt transfixes Richard. There's something about the easy domesticity of it. The profound comfortability with which Jared sits and eats and walks— no longer appearing like a stranger when he interacts with the space.

He tries to pretend that maybe this is what it’s like to have a brother, but he realizes in a pained breath as Jared reaches up in a cabinet for something, a sliver of hip exposing itself, that this is something far beyond his ken. The thought of Jared as— as a brother is… he recoils, watches Jared instead. His gangly arm stretches upwards while the other sits in a loosely curled fist on the counter right next to the cutting board. He's making macaroni and cheese for the both of them. Just the boxed stuff, that's all Richard ever has laying around, but Jared knows how to make it the best. Something about the milk to powder ratio.

Richard swallows down terror and fascination in between mouthfuls of Kraft. Smiling at Jared. Rambling gleefully about the mechanics of interdimensional space travel through the lens of tangible plausibility.

Jared nods and smiles back. Listening. Asking questions at all the right times, throwing in his opinion here and there. And any time Richard starts to talk over him, Richard stops, shakes his head, gestures with his hands, and goes, “Sorry, sorry, what were you going to say?” Because he wants to hear what Jared has to say. He needs to see that enigmatic expression on his face, the wide-eyed mouth-quirking concentration of a tangent. Sometimes relevant, sometimes unexpected, always wild.

—

He’s not sure how they got here, to this point, but Richard thinks it has something to do with Dana Caruthers from his Economics class. Richard had made a pass once— just _once—_ in Freshman year, and she still wouldn’t let him forget it two years later. He’d been horribly mislead as a cruel prank to believe that she was into him, and Richard, stupid, lonely, _horny_ Richard had believed it, only to be publicly humiliated.

“No girl would even wanna watch me jack off,” Richard says, a paper thin laugh stained with self-deprecation. It’s half a joke, half serious. A faint reprimanding of himself for simply existing the way he does. He expects nothing of it, eyes cast downward.

“I would,” Jared says. Hushed, intent. The room goes still. Richard shifts and his bedsprings creak. It’s weird. What Jared just said is very, incredibly, weird. Richard can acknowledge this. But, the weirder thing is, it doesn’t _feel_ weird. If anything, he’s flattered. Horribly, stupidly flattered.

His mouth has gone dry and words feel sticky like old Chinese takeout rice, but he manages to ask, “R-really?” He doesn’t look up. Doesn’t dare look up. The possibility of this being a joke would crush Richard, would crumple this fragile gossamer thread. A single hand out of place, a glance turned wrongfully, and Richard thinks he might just fold in on himself and disappear.

But this is Jared.

“Really,” he says, because of course he says that.

Richard looks up from his feet to where Jared sits on the floor. Cross-legged, hands on his bony knees, staring.

“Okay,” Richard says. Nods. Looks back down. Wets his lips. Bites at his thumbnail. “Okay,” he says again. “Cool.”

Neither one of them moves.

They start talking over one another, Jared’s apology clashing with Richard’s, “Do you wanna—” and they both stop, start, stop again. A clumsy limbo of words where nobody knows what to say and where to put it.

“What were you going to say, Richard?”

He shakes his head vehemently, lips pressed tight, eyes saucer wide. He unclenches his fist from the bedspread and drags it slowly to his knee. Jared watches him. Nails scratch, a brief interlude, and then continue up along his thigh to his zipper. He’s nervous, god is he nervous, but the flat of his palm starts moving against his groin and Richard lets out a stuttering laugh. A noise of amusement.

Jared’s still watching him. Richard’s getting hard and Jared’s watching him like it might be the most erotic thing he’s ever seen, but Richard only knows that because he _knows_ Jared. To anybody else, he might’ve just appeared placid, docile. But he’s sitting there, lip caught between his teeth, hands clenching his own knees. He watches Richard with the attention and reverence he’d only ever dreamed of from girls, but Jared had always readily given him.

“Is this— is this alright?”

“It’s perfect,” Jared sighs, rapt.

Richard’s breath hitches, his hips twitch, because _fuck,_ nobody’s ever called him perfect before. His eyes flicker between his hand, Jared, and the _Cruising_ poster on his wall. He doesn’t know what to focus on. Can’t keep his thoughts from racing as he starts rubbing at himself through his jeans. He’s thought about this. Not— not this exact scenario, because he couldn’t have ever predicted this, not consciously, but he’s pictured Jared before.

Just… just around him. Scrapbook snatches of moments; the heat and size of his hand against Richard’s when they compared that one time, palms pressed flat together; the angular jut of his shoulders whenever they sit side by side, thighs touching, feet bumping in half-acknowledged games of footsie; the pink slip of his tongue when he he’s in thought, wetting his lips with a shimmer of saliva.

Richard’s incredibly hard right now, small noises leaving his lips in between steady sighs, eyes fluttering shut, jaw slackened. He goes for his zipper, stops. Looks up at Jared. Needs the acknowledgement.

Jared nods, lost in concentration. His eyes aren’t focused on Richard’s hand like he thought they’d be, but instead trained on his face. Devouring every detail, every expression. Richard shivers. Jared’s hands are still sitting clenched on his knees, and Richard wonders if he should do something. Offer something.

“Do you want to… uh—”

Jared shakes his head. “No,” he says. “No, this is…” he swallows. “It’s perfect,” he says again, and Richard barely bites back a groan. His fingers stumble drowsily over his zipper until he’s managed to shove his jeans down to his upper thighs, boxers going with them. His dick springs free and he wraps fingers around it, tugging instinctively.

He needs this.

The bed springs creak until he’s settled again, the thin November sunlight lighting up patches of his room, leaving him half in shadow, half illuminated. Jared sits fully in a square of light, the sharp angles of his face softened. And then he’s crawling towards Richard, closing the small gap between them until he’s on his knees between Richard’s own. Not touching, not moving, but asking, “Your hand?”

Richard offers it, nervous, excited. Fucking aroused. Jared wraps his fingers around Richard’s wrist and licks a stripe up his palm. It’s lewd. It’s something Richard’s only seen in grainy pornos, something he never thought he’d see in person. Least of all from Jared, but, somehow, Jared’s the only person he can imagine doing this to him. He slicks up Richard’s palm, suckles each of fingers until they’re slippery and wet, then lets go, sits back on his knees with the attention of a waiting dog. He wipes at his mouth with the back of his arm.

“Oh fuck,” Richard says. “Oh fuck,” he repeats, grabbing his dick again, smearing saliva and precome together until he’s slick, his dick sliding seamlessly through his fist. His thumb swipes over the head, and he forces himself to slow his rhythm unless he wants to finish right here and now, stupidly early. Too early for this to end with Jared right here, watching him.

He strokes himself from base to tip, wet noises filling his room, the errant creak of his bed punctuating every uncontrollable thrust of his hips. Richard’s stomach tenses, and fuck, he doesn't want to come. He really really doesn't want to come yet— maybe ever— not with Jared finally here. His mind whirrs and clicks with hypotheticals; what Jared tastes like, what Jared feels like, what Jared would do to him if given the chance.

He’s pretty, Richard thinks. Unbidden. High cheekbones and sunken sky blue eyes, straight white teeth hiding a wet tongue— a tongue that had licked its way over and around Richard’s palm, a tongue that would probably feel amazing around his dick. Oh. Richard tenses at that thought. His free hand steadies him from behind. His hips pitch upwards and his hand speeds up faster— faster.

“Oh, you're so perfect, Richard,” Jared groans, enraptured and raspy and—

Richard’s coming with a strangled shout. He tries to catch it in his hand, but it's too sudden, too much, and he feels the sticky release slip between his loose fingers. When he opens his eyes, the last place he expects to see where it's landed is on Jared’s face, which, well. Fuck. Christ. Holy shit.

A glob of come streaks across the front of Jared’s hair, skipping down along his face to stretch across his cheek all the way to his upper lip. He's grinning. Proud. Like he's won a— a prize, a commendation for his services. Jared runs fingers through it, gaze unbroken with Richard’s, and cleans it off his fingers with a happy little hum of contentment.

Richard thinks he could come again from just looking at him because, seriously, _fuck._ Maybe it’s the afterglow of an orgasm, the play of light and shadow on his face, but in that moment, Jared is the— is the… Richard’s mind hesitates to form the word, something so foreign, so _soft_ attached to something other than straight brown shoulder length hair and a C-cup chest, but Jared is the most _beautiful_ thing he’s ever seen.

Undistilled impulses flutter to the surface like moths escaping the cloistered hands of a curious child, and, god, wow, okay. Jared’s poetry reading has been rubbing off on him. His chest seizes and he’s grabbing Jared by the shoulders, heaving him upwards, pulling him close. Their noses touch.

They don’t kiss.

Because Richard remembers that Jared just licked his come off his fingers.

Jared’s breath is hot against his lips though, a little stale, his arms boxing Richard in. Waiting, unsure of how to proceed. Richard lets him go, his grip slackening, his thoughts returning to their typical keyboard click-clacking anxiety ways.

He was just about to kiss Jared. He just _jacked off_ in front of Jared. A surge of shame floods his post-orgasmic bliss and Richard is scrambling for his jeans to salvage whatever semblance of normalcy he can from this fucking moment.

Jared slumps down onto the floor between his knees, his own boner pressed obviously against his leg. A chill runs down Richard’s spine, and it’s not wholly unpleasant.

“I’m not gay.”

“Okay,” Jared says. Simple as that. Some twisted part of Richard wishes he’d push at least a little bit, offer the evidence lingering on his face as a testimony to Richard’s stupidity. Instead he pulls out the white handkerchief stained with soot from two weeks ago, wipes his face clean, and then offers it to Richard.

It feels cruel to take it, but he does, out of necessity.

He wipes his hands and awkwardly offers it back to Jared who shakes his head. “Keep it.”

They go downstairs and play video games afterwards, neither making mention of the stolen moment in Richard’s room. He’s jamming down the A button on his controller, punching a pixelated goblin in the face, and, dammit, he just wants Jared to say something.

—

Bathroom stalls were really not made to be eaten in, but fuck if Richard isn't trying. He drops his baloney and cheese only once during the week, which is a goddamn miracle, but it's still not exactly a place of accommodation. He’s being shitty. He knows he's being shitty on like twelve different levels right now avoiding Jared like this, but he can't face him right now. Not after— a shudder. Richard’s face warms. He stuffs some grapes down. Not after what happened last week.

It’d all been too much too quickly. Richard divided his life into two sections; Before Jared (BJ, which, that name needed some workshopping), and After Jared (AJ). BJ consisted of Richard as a solitary unit. A satellite orbiting humanity on his own accord by his own rules of constructed gravity. He never got too close. Never over invested himself. Richard simply took what he needed (attention) in whatever form it was handed to him (bullying, academic success, arguments with his father), and went on his way. But, now, he was living in an AJ world. Life After Jared had sucked him in and he wanted more. God, how he fucking wants more.

He stuffs more baloney in his mouth instead.

The bathroom door swings open and he hears familiar voices.

“Look, I have the answers to Belson’s test, but they’re just in my locker, okay?” Jason says.

Richard stiffens.

“Dude, nice. How the fuck did you manage—”

The Capri Sun balanced on his lap clatters to the floor and Richard lets out a string of swears underneath his breath.

“Who’s in here?” Jason asks. Feet stomp over towards the stall and bang on it.

“Nobody,” Richard says, as if he’s some Greek king of Ithaca. He struggles to pick up the errant juice pouch and only succeeds in knocking the rest of his food off his lap and knocking the stall door open. His half-open bag tumbles onto the floor, too. Everything is terrible and the inertia of being swept up by a hand balled in the collar of his shirt does no favors for his stomach.

“What the fuck did you hear?” Jason asks.

“Nothing!” Richard says. Cowardly. Afraid. He flinches at the idea of having his head slammed against something again. “Nothing at all, I swear. I was just eating— eating my lunch in here and you guys walked in, and I didn’t hear _anything_ . If you could just… just let me go, I _swear_ I won’t—”

“What is this, your cum rag?” Aly asks cruelly, picking Jared’s handkerchief up off the ground. It’d fallen horrifically out of Richard’s bag from when he must’ve crammed it in there by accident.

Richard can't find an answer quick enough, the wiring in his brain crisscrossing half-truths with half-lies, and the silence rapidly turns sour with horrid realization that dawns on Aly’s face. “Oh what the fuck!” he screeches, dropping it back onto the floor. “That is fucking gross!” he yells. Richard feels sick. The taste of baloney isn't great to begin with, but now he really can't stand the residual cold cut claminess in his mouth.

“It- it’s not. It's not it's not,” he says, far too late. It is. In a way, it very much is.

Jason grimaces and drops Richard with pitying look in his eye. “That’s just sad. Look, just stay shut about what you heard here, and we won’t go telling everybody you jerk off in the bathroom.”

“I don’t jerk off in the—” Richard shuts his mouth. Nods. “Okay.”

He closes his eyes and continues nodding in silence as Aly and Jason leave. Even here, even when he’s not physically present, Jared is saving Richard’s ass. He should feel upset. He should feel powerless, humiliated even.

He just wants to find Jared, he realizes. It’s a gnawing desire that’s been holed up for days inside of him, and he finally gives it what it wants. The satisfaction of giving in.

Richard jams whatever he can salvage back into his backpack, zips it up, and slinks out of the bathroom. He feels a little bad for whatever custodian’s gonna have to clean up that mess.

It’s not hard to spot him in the cafeteria; a solitary beanpole ushered off to the corner dressed in a maroon sweater. Richard uses the crumpled $10 in his pocket to pick up two orange juices in those shitty plastic cylinders, two bananas, a Hershey’s bar, and a bag of Doritos he knows will be mostly air, but he can’t help himself.

The snacks clatter unceremoniously onto the unsurprisingly empty table.

“Can I sit here?” Richard asks.

“What?” Jared looks up from his book— some old copy of a Thornton Wilder play he kept telling Richard about. _My Town_ or _Your Town_ or something like that. “Oh, Richard!”

“Can I sit here?” he repeats.

“Of course—”

“That’s it?”

Jared sets down his book, a look of bewilderment on his features. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I follow?”

“I— I fucking. I’ve been avoiding you, like, all week. That’s really shitty of me.” He waits. No immediate answer. “Tell me it was shitty,” Richard demands, a little tense, a tremor in his voice. He wants to hear the words. Wants the reprimanding vocalized so he can justify the atonement he desperately seeks. He shoves the Hershey’s bar closer to Jared. Long fingers brush against his as they take it, drawing it in so that it sits halfway between them.

“Thank you,” is all Jared says. An acknowledgement. That’s all Richard wanted, and now, in far kinder words than he deserves, Jared has given it to him. A not quite apology for a not quite crime, a tacit two-way agreement that restores Richard’s understanding of the world through the After Jared lens.

He takes a seat and they share the Hershey’s bar one piece at a time.

“What’re you reading?” Richard asks, halfway through his bag of four Cool Ranch Doritos.

“ _Our Town,_ ” Jared says. He holds up the cover, a blue background with a faded brown town sprawled out like a map of some far away place.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uhhhhhhhhhhhhh sorry this is so late, and sorry it's not better, and sorry for being that person who apologizes in the notes. but I did it!!! I finished something over 5k words!!!
> 
> heed the warnings, etc, etc.
> 
> Thank you though to everybody who encouraged me to finish this, it really means a lot! Big shoutout to joycecarolnotes and robokittens for sure, too. I'm notoriously bad at finishing longer projects, and while I could clean this up more, I'm just proud I got it done ahahaha. And thank you all to who have read so far! Your support means a lot <3

Things don’t take time to return to equilibrium because through the sheer power of denial, things were never knocked out of equilibrium. That’s what Richard tells himself. That things are still normal, fine. Regular. 

And after Jared comes over to his house enough times after school, after Jared sits just as close on his couch as before, and after Jared excitedly shows him more grainy bird pictures on his flip phone, Richard pretends he doesn’t even remember why he was anxious.

November continues to drip through the IV, slow but steady. Nourishing with its autumnal glaze sliding gracefully into a wintry cusp. 

Richard’s hoodies are finally fully traded in for real shoulder-hugging sweaters, and if he convinces Jared to trade his beige cable-knit for Richard’s brown one, it’s just because he thinks the brown one is too big on him. Too long on his torso. It’d fit Jared better, and then this way, things are kept even. Equal. 

He sleeps in the beige cable-knit because, of course, the heater in his room still isn’t working right, and it’s the warmest thing he owns. Or so he tells himself. Richard’s been telling himself a lot of things lately. 

One of those things is that he doesn’t need to wash Jared’s—  _ his _ sweater right away or for even a while because he just wears it at night. It’s not like he gets it dirty or anything.

— 

It’d be silly for them to be paired up for Mr. Gregory’s Economics assignment, considering they’re in completely different classes. But Richard still finds that it doesn’t sit right with him. 

His partner’s fine, some kid named Jeremy who’s on the same leg of the social totem pole as himself so there’s little he has to worry about there, but something doesn’t feel right. He would tell this to Jared if Jared weren’t busy with his own project partner, Sarah O’Halloran, two tables over in the library after school.

Her chair’s angled towards him, elbows on the table, the book sitting between them, but Richard sees it. Sees the way she barely gives the reading a glance, and instead trains her eyes on Jared. Richard doesn’t get it. People are supposed to be  _ afraid _ of Jared. Are supposed to leave him and Richard alone. 

What the fuck is Sarah’s problem.

They’re supposed to hang out at Richard’s after, so he slouchingly waits in a corner of the library, fastidiously ignoring Jared and Sarah and definitely focusing on his biology homework.

Sarah laughs at something Jared says and he strains his ear to listen, but he’s too far. Jared’s voice is too soft. He feels like he’s chasing something unreachable.

On the walk home that day, Richard spots an inky seven digit number scrawled on Jared’s hand. He stares at it, hears himself ask, “What’s that?” and then immediately regrets it.

“Oh, it’s Sarah’s number,” Jared says. Simple, to the point. No further explanation or discussion, and that’s fine, Richard tells himself. That’s fine. Jared can date whoever the fuck he wants. 

“Do you like her?” Richard asks. It’s supposed to be casual, an effortlessly flowing piece of conversation, but it comes out strained. Accusatory. He cringes at his own words and shoves his hands in his pockets, stepping out of his way to crunch some satisfying leaves. 

“Sarah?” Jared asks in return, a question for a question. The suspension of an answer pinches Richard’s insides. 

“Yeah, yes. Sarah.”

Jared doesn’t answer immediately. Mulls it over. Digesting Richard’s words with a quizzical look on his face. “She’s nice, incredibly capable as a project partner,” he says. A pause. “Why do you ask, Richard? You don’t— do you have feelings towards Sarah?” Jared asks, a cock of the head, hands gripping his backpack straps as they walk along, the bite of his lip. 

Richard stops mid-stride, foot poised over a crunchy looking leaf. 

“What?” he laughs, high-pitched and uncomfortable. “No, no— god… no,” he shakes his head. Crunches the leaf. “I mean, she’s— she seems  _ fine _ , but I was just wondering because— because…” he stutters, feeling the words build and tumble out against his will, an answer too-lengthy and too-revealing. He can’t stop himself. “Because you two seem to be spending a lot of time together, and that’s— that’s  _ fine, _ but, you know, “ a shrug, “I was just curious, is all. I heard she got that nose piercing from Dylan McClosky in the back of the E-Wing last year— that’s pretty fucking sketchy. You’re my friend and— and,” he lifts his chin, a strange act of defiance, his lips quirk, “I just want to make sure you’re… uh. You know what you’re getting into.”

Jared stares at him. Richard can’t maintain eye contact with him right now. The deluge of words he’s just unleashed is drowning him.

“We’re friends?” he smiles.

Richard blinks. He physically stops in his tracks, lurching a little bit with the sudden motion. “Uh… yeah? Of fucking course we’re friends. Did you not—” he fidgets, blinking rapidly at Jared, processing the question. “You’re, like, my only friend. You’re the only person who’s ever come over to my house,” Richard says incredulously. “I—”  _ jacked off in front of you, _ he thinks, unbidden, frowning. “You’re my best friend,” Richard says instead and he’s terrified because he means it. 

God, fuck, does he mean it, and a small, bitter part of him is upset that Jared doesn’t know that. Doesn’t see that without Richard having to— having to say it. Saying things is hard.

But the bigger part of him, the part of him that comprises mostly of who stands right here in front of Jared, delights in saying it. In hearing out loud from his own mouth in his own words. Watching the nigh magical effect it has on Jared’s face. 

“You’re my best friend,” he says again, and there it is. Jared’s moving into his space and hugging him, burying his teary-eyed face into Richard’s shoulder, and this is it. Richard is hugging him back. His stomach flutters and he grips onto Jared tightly, for dear life.

They watch Star Trek reruns at his house and Richard sits next to Jared, pressed against his side because their textbooks and backpacks take up the rest of the couch. When he leans his head on Jared’s shoulder, Jared happily accommodates, a thin arm reaching around him. 

The terror is still there. It’s always there. But now it’s grown into something new, something he can’t delineate into properly labeled boxes, and it drives Richard a little insane. A little obsessive. 

It feeds on the idea of absence, of returning to a life Before Jared, and Richard doesn’t know what he’d do if he woke up one day that if— if everything just turned out to be a dream and, wow, alright. He’s been watching too much mortality-rattling Sci-Fi. He inhales deeply, swallows the scent of Jared deep in his lungs. 

He’s not dreaming.

— 

The projects are finished, presented, turned in, and Sarah goes back to being a distant anonymity, which is great. It’s actually fucking wonderful. 

But what isn’t is that half a week into December, Jared’s already missed four days. Richard adamantly does not like this. It leaves him high strung, more pedantic than usual, and a chance encounter with just Jason gives him a bloody and bruised nose. But he doesn’t care. 

He just wants Jared.

Which, okay, is frustrating for a whole slew of reasons, but it’s mainly because he doesn’t know where Jared lives, and Jared isn’t— he isn’t picking up his phone. His shitty little flip phone that Richard’s never actually seen him use to make a phone call so he doesn’t even know if it  _ works, _ but he gave Richard his number what feels like ages ago, so that has to mean something. Richard just doesn’t know what.

But he keeps calling.

Six o’clock on a Friday, at the very end of a very stressful week, someone finally picks up. There’s no hello, nothing but some breathing and the sound of rustling, but Richard knows it’s him.

“Stay here,” Richard says in the dark of his kitchen. He’s seated at the table with his Calc textbook open, but his notebook blank. There’s a stupid blue woven tweed placemat that’s been sitting there next to him, untouched, for the past few days. “At— at least for tonight.”

There’s no answer for a moment, and Richard thinks terrifyingly that maybe it’s the wrong number. That he’d misdialed after punching in the same seven fucking digits every day for the past four days. And then he hears softly, so softly he thinks he might’ve imagined it, “Okay.” And then the line goes dead. Richard stares at his own phone.

Twenty minutes later, Jared shows up at his door wrapped in the brown sweater and a thin green jacket with the hood pulled up, his backpack slung over one shoulder, and he barrels inside along with a burst of brutally cold air. He’s hugging Richard. Shaking quietly, always quietly. They stand there and breathe. 

And then Jared steps back— god how Richard already misses the contact— and he sees it; a sickly dark blue swallowing his left eye, a slice of red above the bowline. 

Ice, Richard thinks. It feels like a dream; time skipping in and out, the moments only vaguely connected together like a part and parcel collage. 

He’s moving quickly and wrapping a frozen bag of peas in too many paper towels and handing it to Jared and then they’re on the couch and Jared is holding him— warm, safe, tangible— and the TV is on and it’s— it’s bright, loud, friendly— and Jared is maybe crying and Richard is pretending not to notice. The bag of peas ends up on the coffee table, half-melted, a little clammy. Definitely going to stain the wood.

“Is there someone we can call? There has to be,” Richard says abruptly. He twists his neck up.

Jared looks torn. “...There is, yes,” he says, eyes sliding away. He bites at the inside of his cheek.

“But?”

“They’d move me to a different home.”

“Isn’t that good?”

“It could be a different state. Across the country, even.” 

Oh. Richard feels sick.

“You— it’s not because of…”  _ Me, _ he thinks, but doesn’t say. He can’t say it. That’d be too— it’s too vain. Too much greed and guilt all tangled up like vines inside of him. Jared doesn’t answer. “Because you’re almost done with the school year anyways, right?” Richard offers.

Jared graciously takes it, nods.

They wind up sharing Richard’s bed, the cardboard stiff green duvet shoved unceremoniously down and heaps of blankets piled up. Richard thinks for a moment about trying to lie shoulder to shoulder, but he knows that’s ridiculous, and the bed is barely big enough to fit both of them as it is. 

And holding Jared isn’t really that terrible. Head tucked into the crook of Richard’s chest, his hair tickling Richard’s nose, knees curled up and bumping against his. He’s amazed at how someone so tall can make themselves so tiny if they so choose. Maybe that’s just how Jared gets through life.

“You comfy?”

Jared nods. “Yeah. Are you, Richard?”

“Yeah.”

Richard lets a hand rest tentatively over Jared’s back; uncharacteristically delicate, toying with the fabric of his shirt. He drifts to sleep.

They wake up face to face— or, well, Richard wakes up, and he sees that Jared’s already awake. His eyes are still impossibly blue even in the dim light of drawn blinds and the swell of purple around his eye.

“Richard…” Jared warns, like if he doesn’t move something will happen, something neither of them will be able to take back. Richard stays completely still and lets out a shuddering breath. A little noise of excitement like he’s been waiting for this, and— and maybe he has been. Somehow. In some way.

His knees bump up against Jared’s when they kiss; a slow, lingering press of the lips that has his stomach flipping in on itself and Richard is so afraid he might start laughing and Jared will take it the wrong way, and he doesn’t even know why he wants to laugh, but he fucking does. 

Jared tastes like he needs to brush his teeth and Richard probably does too, but he kisses him again, deeper, swallowing down his laughter, hands crawling up arms and wrapping around shoulders, and, fuck, okay. He’s grinding on Jared. Little twitches of his hips against the leg slotted between his thighs.

There’s the gentle graze of teeth over his bottom lip and it’s better than anything he could’ve imagined. A hand is tangled in his hair and Richard’s pressed into the hollow of Jared’s throat. The bed creaks in a way that reminds Richard of that time weeks ago where he had bared himself for Jared, spread his legs and taken every word of praise that he uttered.

“Ow,” Jared suddenly says, a soft laugh. Richard looks up, sees him clutching at his ribs. A bruise peeks out from between his long fingers where his shirt’s been shucked up.

“Shit— sorry. Sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s okay, I know you didn’t,” Jared says, cutting Richard off with a kiss. His hand reaches down between them and he rests his palm against the jut of Richard’s boxers. “Is this okay?” he asks against his lips. Jared applies the slightest hint of pressure and Richard sighs.

“Yes,” he nods, “yes, fuck. Yes.”

Jared pulls Richard’s boxers down enough so that his dick springs free, eagerly hard already, and Richard scrambles to do the same for Jared. He wraps fingers around his dick and watches, rapt, as Jared’s eyes flutter shut, a low groan rumbling from his chest. 

Sock-clad feet brush against one another as both boys lunge forward to kiss, teeth clacking with a complete lack of finesse, but with enough fervor to make up for it. 

Jared is solid in his hand, slick with precome. Warm and weighty as Richard speeds up his strokes and Jared does the same in return. 

He feels himself building towards an orgasm, and their kisses fall apart in favor of desperate breaths, bitten bottom lips as Richard comes first. He tenses as Jared strokes him through it, and he speeds up his own hand until Jared follows suit.

And, finally, laying there in the sticky, limbless aftermath, Richard starts laughing.

“What’re those photos on your phone? Not the bird ones, but, you know, the ones you always click past so fast?” Richard asks this after they’ve cleaned themselves up with tissues and a hand towel, and now they’re curled up on the couch downstairs.

Jared slides his eyes away from Richard, the barest hint of color coming to his face. He looks down at his phone, then back up at Richard, and holds up his phone.

“Oh,” Richard says. He blushes. That’s fucking creepy, he almost says, on instinct. A defense. But it’s not the truth. It’s not what he  _ wants _ to say. What he wants to say isn’t something he can articulate through words, so he smiles, shuffles his feet closer on the couch, and says, “Thanks.”

Jared smiles back at him. “I’m sorry if you feel in any way violated with your personal privacy, and I can delete them if you’d like.”

“No, no, it’s. It’s fine,” Richard says, and he means it. “I didn’t… didn’t know what I look like from the side,” he laughs. “Is my nose really like that?”

“I like your nose.”

Of course Jared likes his nose.

— 

It’s Christmas vacation, a whole week off from school, and Jared’s spent nearly every single day at Richard’s. They pass a lot of the time catching Jared up on classic Christmas movies (that Richard might’ve also never seen), and even venturing out into the arctic terrain to grab ingredients to try their hand at making Christmas cookies— which, is mostly for Jared’s benefit, but Richard won’t complain when a plate of warm shortbread cookies is slid in front of him.

Richard’s father had briefly stopped in apparently while they were out, the only evidence of his arrival being a lingering suitcase by the door and tire tracks in the driveway. Richard doesn’t have to call him to know he won’t be around for Christmas, and… he thinks he prefers that. At least he tells himself that. He stares at the black suitcase, no doubt swapped out for his larger red one for longer trips.

Jared wraps an arm around his shoulders and Richard lets himself be pulled in. They walk past the empty suitcase and into the house.

“What if we went somewhere warm?” Richard asks later. He’s holding Jared’s hand as they lay in his bed on top of the covers, shoes still on, backpacks slouched against the wall. He traces fingers up along the bruises and feels that slow burning anger inside him.

“When?”

Richard quirks his lips, tangles their legs together. “Soon.”

—

It's 2AM and his phone is ringing. Or, well, at least he thinks it’s somewhere around 2AM because that seems like the kind of obscene hour he’d be getting a phone call. He drags himself awake and scrambles for his phone, noting with bleary eyes the name on his caller ID.

He immediately answers when he sees it’s Jared. Which, not much of a surprise, considering nobody else has ever once called him.

“Hello?” He waits, propped up on one arm. “Hello?”

“Richard?” Jared says, and he sounds far away, tinny. Like he might be clutching the phone too tightly in his too big hands because he’s afraid of speaking too loudly. Folding in on himself always.

“What is it? Is everything alright?” Richard flops onto his back and rubs the crust out of his eyes. He blinks to adjust to the dark of his bedroom. 

Jared doesn’t answer. Only breathes into the phone.

“Let’s go somewhere warm,” Richard says suddenly. Choking on foreign tasting courage.

“Richard—”

“No, no. Let’s go. Tonight. Right now. We—” he quirks his lips in thought, a brief interlude of doubt slipping in, but he shoves it down. “We don’t— there’s nothing here for us.” Richard grips a fistful of his blankets as he waits for Jared to answer. It’s a moonshot, a crazy idea. A stupid plotline in some indie flick that he’d chastise if he were in the audience. 

What if CPS hunts them down? The school district? What would Richard’s father— he stalls on that thought, peters out like a dying car engine. The right thing would be to open the hood of the car and fix the engine up, but instead he feels like he’s reaching in with both hands and tearing it apart further. 

Real life isn’t supposed to be like this, so full of whimsy and adventure. But Richard also used to think that people like Jared didn’t exist, so he’s been proven wrong on at least one account so far. Not that— not that Richard  _ likes _ to be proven wrong, but he’s willing to concede on this one point.

“Alright,” Jared finally says. “Let’s go somewhere warm.”

Richard’s sliding out of bed at those words and hunting down the suitcase left by the front door from over a week ago.

— 

They’ve been driving in silence for at least forty minutes, and Richard is okay with that. Content to watch the passing clusters of trees and occasional speck of a town fling itself past them on the highway. It’s— they don’t know where they’re going. Not really. Not… concretely, at least. 

They’re headed south which is vaguer than Richard is wholly comfortable with, but he daydreams about fried chicken and sweet tea and other southern stereotypes and thinks that maybe they’ll be okay.

Jared grips the steering wheel with determinedly careful hands and Richard stares at them on and off again, digesting the situation along with the bony curves and juts of Jared’s knuckles, somehow conflating the two in his mind. It’s— it’s fuzzy, he blames it on the static of sleepiness, but makes sense. Somehow.

At some point, maybe just when the sun is fluttering over the tops of trees, maybe when Richard is buzzing with unbridled anxieties surrounding cash budgeting and food rationing, Jared puts one of those hands on Richard’s knee. His knuckles are purpled and a touch swollen.

Richard stills, reaches out. He places his own hand on top of Jared’s and allows himself a trembling smile.

“We’re going somewhere warm,” one of them says. Richard isn’t sure which, but he knows they’re in agreement.

— 

“Oh— oh fuck, okay.”

“Are you sure you want to—”

“Yes,” Richard says, definitely not whining. “Yes, we’re so close and… and I want this.”

Jared laughs softly, leans down. Kisses him with a honey sweet fullness Richard craves. The backseat of the Honda has barely enough room for them, definitely not spread out like this, but a motel isn’t an option at the moment, and Richard’s been thinking about this for two weeks too long.

“Just… slowly,” Richard warns, whispered breath against Jared’s lips. He strokes himself because that’s what he heard works best for this type of thing. Skin-warmed lube is drizzled sloppily all over his stomach and dick and in between his ass, partly a fault of working in the dark, partly a fault of his nervous hands trying to prepare himself.

“Of course,” Jared says. He leans down and kisses him again and, fuck, Richard feels the head of his dick pressing against his ass, trying to press inside him, and Richard grits his teeth. Bites down hard.

“Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck,” he says, but at the slightest feeling of Jared hesitating, he blurts, “Don’t stop. Don’t fucking stop.” He speeds up his hand on his dick.

Jared slides into him a little further with a shuddering give. “Richard,” he groans, his voice low, taking on that gravelly sound that gets Richard really hard really quick. “Oh my goodness, Richard. You’re—  _ oh, _ ” he says, pushing a little further in. His head sinks to Richard’s shoulder and he kisses along it to his collarbone. 

_ Say it, _ Richard thinks. He knows what Jared’s going to say, so he pulls him in closer, wraps his legs a little more tightly around his thin waist. It pushes Jared a little deeper inside him and they both groan. It hurts, fuck does it hurt, but Richard wants it. He digs his heels in and Jared’s just over halfway inside him, already panting, fingers digging into the cheap material of the carseats. He looks like a man on his last leg of self-control.

Richard wiggles his hips and Jared cries out, hips twitching and they both scramble to grab at one another at the sharp sensation. He feels like he’s going to be split in half and he’s not sure when the really good part starts for him, that maybe everybody in porn really is a liar, but he realizes he could also be content with just this, with watching Jared writhing above him and inside him.

“Richard,” Jared pants, propping himself up on his elbows. He pulls out just the slightest bit, stares down Richard in the dark as he says, voice low, “You’re perfect,” then pushes back in. Richard swears and pulls him closer. 

It start to feels good. Really good.


End file.
